


An Answer

by yuletide_archivist



Category: In Nomine
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2004-01-04
Updated: 2004-01-04
Packaged: 2018-01-25 03:46:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,164
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1629821
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yuletide_archivist/pseuds/yuletide_archivist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A meeting between the Archangel of Dreams and the Demon Princess of Nightmares, in the twilight ground between them.</p>
            </blockquote>





	An Answer

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Asael

 

 

A/N: Happy New Year, Asael! Turns out you get both the In Nomine pairings you asked for. I had started this one just a few hours before I saw the other one posted....

_A dream is a scripture, and many scriptures are nothing but dreams. -- Umberto Eco_

There are places in the Marches where it is always twilight. Places where the impossible is -- almost -- routine. Places where the strangeness of what could have been tangles with the promise of what might still come to pass.

The Citadel of the Archangel of Dreams is not one of those places. It lies too close to Heaven, too far to the edge of the realm. So Blandine leaves it often, goes walking through the Marches, as close to the nightmare-side as she can.

That shifting space is where the Marches' power truly lies. Many of her servitors don't understand that, or don't figure it out until they have walked the ethereal realm for centuries. The points of uncertainty, of possibility, of infinite strangeness, are what separate this place from the corporeal realm where most beings spend their time. She touches human dreamscapes as she passes, her presence blessing them, lending hope and lightness to the souls who visit her.

She walks, and she looks through the twilight, toward the black tower that is twin to her own. Blandine is a cherub, and there is one attunement she has had since before the demons fell. She still feels it, tugging at her, drawing her toward the far tower, urging her to make certain that the tower's inhabitant is safe.

Which is, of course, ridiculous. Beleth left her thousands of years ago. But she can still feel the tie between them, a clear, sustained silver note that sings all the way from where she stands to the place, across the infinite reach of the nightmare Marches, where Beleth paces at the top of her tower, brooding and alone.

She can see it almost as clearly as if she were there, the Demon Princess of Nightmares wrapped in a cloak of terror, her eyes like supernovas, her every movement a melody of despair. Blandine's longing is a soft minor chord around her, tinging the dreams of nearby sleepers with the bitter indigo of long-lost love, and she watches without really being able to collect herself and stop them as the wisps and bubbles of dream float away from her, into the darkness ahead, into nightmare.

Where she cannot follow. Oh, perhaps she _could_ , perhaps the clinging black mists of nightmare would part to let her through, and perhaps she could best whatever horrors might seek to intercept her there. But when she got to the foot of the Tower of Nightmares, she knows that Beleth would deny her entrance, and that would break her heart.

So she stands here, instead, on the border between dream and nightmare, in a place where it is always either dawn or dusk, in a place where impossible things have been known to happen. She stands here and sings a song that cannot be translated, a song composed in the tongue of angels, the song she sung at the beginning of the world when she first knew Beleth, the Angel of Fear, and felt herself overcome. The song carries on the mist, out over the realms of the Marches, haunting and strange, and Blandine abandons herself to it.

* * *

It is midnight in the Citadel of the Demon Princess of Nightmares. It has been midnight here for as long as Beleth cares to remember, since long before a mortal named that hour _the very witching time of night, when churchyards yawn, and hell itself breathes out contagion to this world._ Humans have been afraid of the dark since they learned to fear, and Beleth knows that was long ago indeed.

She stands at the top of the tower, where the stone crumbles away to reveal a sky that never shines with stars, and she looks out through the night of her realm, away from Hell, toward the far reaches of myth and dream. She can feel the Archangel out there, in the mist somewhere, and she narrows her eyes and refuses to care.

What place is there for her, on that side of the War? She ruled the Word of Fear, in the dawning of the world. Ruled the Word of Fear, and loved the Angel of Dreams, who thought -- with all the sweet naivete of that Word -- that love would be enough to keep her on the side of Heaven, when other angels avoided her, distrusted her, scorned her. When the Lightbringer came to woo her, Beleth heard the dissonance in every word he spoke, and she went with him anyway.

So now she has a tower of her own, and it looks out over the Marches toward the glittering hope of dawn that surrounds Blandine's stronghold. It is a cosmic joke, though whether the prankster responsible rules Heaven or Hell Beleth has never been certain. She wants never to see Blandine again. She can close her eyes at any moment and know exactly where she is.

Like right now; Blandine is out walking again, avoiding the shining elegance of her citadel, wandering through the Marches. Beleth clenches her fists until her nails bite through the skin, blood dripping from her hands, unwilling to look and unable to look away. The Archangel is standing as near to Beleth's domain as she can, and singing to her.

Oh, every angel and demon anywhere in the Marches can hear it, Beleth has no doubt of that. Blandine's voice is clear and pure, ringing like a silver bell, resonating through the fabric of the Symphony. It is a lovesong, and the Archangel of Dreams has only ever sung it for her. It is _the_ lovesong, the first one, in the language of angels, that all the others since have poorly imitated.

Beleth's mouth is twisted, like her shape, like her heart. She cannot remember if she ever sang like that. She draws her cloak around her and begins, slowly, to descend the long staircase that winds through the tower.

* * *

The last note of Blandine's song hangs in the air around her, shimmering from silver to gold. She has stopped trying to sense Beleth's presence, but as the song ends she realizes that she can feel it anyway, much closer than she expected, a crawling shivering dread that pains her heart, makes her recognize what her love has become.

Beleth comes close enough to see her, meets her eyes, and begins to sing. The airy, nimble tongue of angels is hard work for Beleth, anymore; she sings instead in the corrupted dialect the demons use, which sounds like rust, like gravel. It suits her voice, which has grown dissonant since she fell.

The song she sings is not a lovesong; the helltongue has no words for that. But it is a reply, and Blandine smiles. It is enough.

 


End file.
